"Question: What is validation?
Answer: How web designers try to justify over-charging for their work + pat each other on the back.
If you are a web designer (and/or want links from pretentious web designers) then validation is a great idea...it is core to the group circle-jerk amongst cool web designers. But for everyone else, it generally doesn't matter." ~ Aaron Wall*
* Aaron Wall is universally recognized as the worlds leading SEO expert
Some of the highest ranking, best known, most visited web sites don't validate:
- eBay.com: 253 Errors
- YouTube.com: 185 Errors, 41 warnings
- vatican.it: 1 Error, 4 warnings
- amazon.com: 1127 Errors, 77 warnings
- facebook.com: 43 Errors, 4 warnings
- whitehouse.gov: 10 Errors, 1 warning
- Twitter.com: 88 Errors... and the list goes on forever.
Search engines themselves do not validate and are not in the validation business.
- Google: 39 Errors, 2 warnings
- Bing: 12 Errors
- Yahoo: 34 Errors, 8 warnings
- Ask: 103 Errors, 26 warnings
- Moreover: 45 Errors, 5 warnings
Why Talk About Errors?
I talk about Errors because many web designers and wanna be SEOs push perfect code over results. The name of that game is distraction and misdirection. Their reasoning is that if the code is perfect, the site is therefore perfect and guaranteed to beat anything with an error anywhere. What you don't know CAN hurt you. They don't tell you that if you add a single YouTube video (or any number of other elements) to a perfect page, it will automatically no longer be perfect, and have an error. People and Search Engines Don't Care About Errors as long as they can see the page and no messages pop up stopping them from using the site.
Do My Sites Validate?
Yes - and then No. SEO is not about pleasing Code Nazis, it's about pleasing site visitors, improving your position in search engine results, increasing traffic to your site, getting links to your site and improving your sales based on what people see and do once they arrive on your site. Google, Bing, Yahoo etc simply do not care one iota about validation - period, end of story. Sites I build validate until I add some elements that have built in errors or warnings. Many of these elements (third party apps) specifically state in their Terms Of Service (TOS) that their code must remain intact and unchanged.
What The Code Nazis Say:
Matt Cutts of Google blogs, does videos, visits PubCons, communicates on Twitter and is very involved with the SEO community. He has never acknowledged that validation has anything to do with Google's search results. On Twitter, a typical (and actual) Code Nazi "tweet" to Matt Cutts:
"Matt, all I need you to do is say that Valid HTML is a factor in the algo and I'll consider becoming a Cuttlett, I promise. ;)" ~Name withheld so as not to embarass the Code Nazi
